you’ve got no hope if you try to pretend
to be Reed Hastings or Mark Zuckerberg
or Bill Gates I short I mean you know
why a way we’re doing this we’re like we
won’t have a difference we think of
ourselves like Alchemist we take in
money and out comes joy I would say I’ve
always believed that a strong mission
statements really important and I have
to say we’ve never succeeded at it he’s
an American entrepreneur and
philanthropist he’s the co-founder and
CEO of Netflix and he serves on the
board of directors of Facebook and a
number of other nonprofit organizations
he has an estimated net worth of over a
billion dollars
he’s Reed Hastings and here’s my take on
his top 10 rules to success rule number
one is my personal favorite and make
sure to stick around all the way to the
end for some special bonus clips and as
always if Reed says something that
really resonates with you please leave
in the comments below and put quotes
around it to other people can be
inspired as well enjoy
[Music]
you have to be authentic I mean you’ve
got no hope if you try to pretend to be
Reed Hastings or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill
Gates or whoever you want to think your
CEOs are that you’ve met you know that
is crazy and you got to really get
comfortable with yourself your strengths
and weaknesses
people are inspired by authenticity and
I’m just surprised how many people feel
like they’re acting and or try to act
and you may be a really quiet person and
that’s fine but if you have that fierce
will that desire for the institution the
company to be great in your own role and
that is secondary and you authentically
express that whatever ways you do then
you’ll be greatly accepted okay
and so that’s all it takes is to be
authentic and not try to be something
else and to fundamentally care at your
core about what’s good for the company
and if everybody knows and you act in
the notion of what’s good as best as
your judgement can tell what’s good for
the company they will see that and
people will follow you and they won’t be
cynical it’s when you hide things it’s
when you pretend if we don’t if we’re
not creative enough if we don’t push it
hard enough you know we’ve got to have
some failures and so we don’t really
want to have all hits I’m gladly glad
the first ones are hits but you know the
sign that you’re right at the the edge
of chaos the edge of creativity is that
some stuff doesn’t work and why do you
want to be there because networks don’t
want to be there life short I mean you
know why a way we’re doing this we’re
like we want to have a difference right
now and so it’s a it’s an eight that’s
wanting to to push the edge to create
something that we the people are proud
of and that they enjoy we collect this
year about eight billion dollars of
customers money so thank you all of you
for giving us your money and what we do
is we say that money is entrust to
create joy we have to turn that into the
most joy possible and so we look and we
say for every show if a show cost a
hundred million dollars how much joy how
much viewing did it create amongst all
of you
if it costs 50 million or 200 million of
course you want different amounts of joy
so we look at it as how much joy can we
create of your money and if we turn it
into joy effectively then you’re happy
and you tell your friends and we grow
and then we have more money next year to
turn into more joy so we think of
ourselves like Alchemist we take in
money and out comes joy I would say I’ve
always believed that a strong mission
statements really important and I have
to say we’ve never succeeded at it it’s
like this odd thing you know we’ve had
them every year for 15 years they’re
constantly different and now we’re all
so cynical we’re like well we’re trying
to make people happy I mean that’s the
fundamental thing is in consumer service
you know we’re trying to be better and
us in Disney and mission aren’t that
different there’s a bunch of different
tactics at it but we’re an emotional
product we cater to the things that are
important but not necessary and I love
that part about it because like when
you’re selling milk or penicillin you’re
selling something somebody needs and we
get to sell something you want okay that
you choose to do because it’s really
cool a human you know to be entertained
and connect to people over entertainment
and so we celebrate that a lot and we
want to change the industry but in terms
of like a mission statement like so many
companies have you know Facebook to
talks about a more connected and open
world and that you see that phrase again
and again and again and it’s a powerful
mantra we don’t have an equivalent and I
think we probably would have been
stronger if we do we’re in the early
days it was to connect people with
movies they love and it’s okay but it’s
kind of like a long kind of awkward
phrase connect people with movies the
love and you know it’s just not punchy
and and then so like we used it we had
t-shirts you know and then I didn’t
really motivate anyone didn’t really
stick but we knew we were trying to make
people happy with DVDs and then
eventually was dreaming and original
content so it didn’t hold us back much
what I find interesting about you the
way you conduct your business is that
when when stuff doesn’t work out you
apologize you go and say we made it I
made a mistake and all that what is that
the first time you had to go out there
and say sorry
this was
and it was I remember with the increase
the rate increase right then you’re like
not forget about it like what was I
expiry for you as a boss when you’re
like I have to go and own this going
through marriage counseling 20 years ago
was really how I moved to become a
better manager and leader really and
yeah you know this marriage counselor
was able to get me to see that I was
often lying to myself and to my wife you
know saying oh family is the most
important thing and I’d stay at work all
night and that the value of honesty is
that people can take honesty even if
it’s not necessarily what they want to
hear if it’s really sincere and then the
question is read what do you do to not
lose a culture if you believe you got a
great one early on yeah I mean one of
the most common questions new employee
has is how do we preserve the culture
and I say well to preserve something to
pickle it is the wrong solution we’re
not trying to preserve the culture we’re
trying to make it better and it’s
materially better than it was five years
ago and I’ll cite a couple of specific
examples and then say you know what your
job in addition to doing your role is to
figure out how do we get even better
because it’s only when you struggle to
get better that you know you you really
keep it vital it alive so you always
have to be saying yeah it’s pretty good
culture but I’m sure it can be better
how can we be better and so it’s that
struggle to improve that keeps it fresh
you know we’re pretty good at movies and
TV shows and so the competition that we
worry about is the substitution you know
again when people are spending time on
snapchat or Facebook video or YouTube
it’s not Netflix or some new app that
isn’t yet invented and so in the long
term you have to believe that movies and
TV shows will be sort of like the Opera
and the novel pretty mushy businesses
and human entertainment will have moved
on to something new so yeah we’re
getting really good at movies and TV
shows we get we are in the beginning of
a great run on that but in the long term
they’ll be substitutes or substitutes
for everything to come up and then the
ultimate challenge for us is can we
figure out that what that new form of
entertainment is is that VR is it gaming
is it AR
oh three and oh four were growing really
fast oh five blockbuster attacks and so
we thought we were very clever we came
up with a number of ways to
counter-attack and remember that
everybody’s got every DVD so you have
basically the same bust or nuts had
the same content offering because it’s
non-exclusive licensing to get DVDs so
we could differentiate on our service
fulfillment levels where 99% and theirs
were 89 but that’s like a really
abstract for a customer you know
thinking of signing up doesn’t mean
anything right and then they discounted
massively so I was like half our price
and so we were losing share so I you
know we were struggling what to do about
it so we did three or four big efforts
one is in the end of oh five we added
Netflix friends which was our own social
network and remember no five
you know Facebook’s just on a few
universities okay so our own social
network amongst our members and if you
enabled each other you could see what
each other were renting and rating and
we thought wow the viral effects of this
would be really powerful etc we added ad
sales back in the day was like a yahoo
type banners and you could have we could
have we sold banners you know above the
the choosing interface we added use DVD
sales on our site to consumers so you
know of course we had some excess DVDs
from four years ago so we added an
operation to sell them for four bucks a
pop and you know two different logistics
but we added all that and we added a red
envelope entertainment which was a group
that we brought in to buy DVDs buy films
out of Sundance and similar festivals to
them publish them on DVD so getting into
content so we did these four efforts and
each one you know was a dozen people 15
people and made us feel great I mean
employees loved them because you know
here was a tangible thing that was not
just 98 percent versus 89 percent here
was the thing that they couldn’t do or
weren’t doing it was a differentiator
right and was it management so clever
and we went through these waves of
battles and
six and oh seven and in the end we won
they ended up closing down their online
thing and two years later going
completely bankrupt but we looked back
and none of those four efforts made any
contribution to our victory and one by
one we had closed them down along the
way every single one of those four and
so in hindsight we realized when
attacked we should retreat to do the
core better and not try to broaden the
surface of attack essentially and it was
a great lesson for us of focus and so
now when people say aren’t you getting
in the news or sports were like
absolutely not you know and we’re really
confident of our answer like movies and
TV shows on a global basis enormous
market and so we’re much less subject to
being prone to go off and chase the
shiny object to try to have something in
a checklist to differentiate and to
trust and in hindsight if we had just
gone from like 98 percent perfect to
ninety-nine point nine we would have
done a lot more for the business and you
know and it’s hard work it’s operational
logistics how to get DVDs not to break I
mean the amount of polycarbonate
analysis we had to do is all this stuff
we would have beaten blog post or sooner
than we did but let’s talk about values
high performance freedom responsibility
context not control these are obviously
not math it seems like that if you want
to do well at Netflix you have to
subscribe to the values and if you don’t
you’re out yeah and the reason that we
publish our culture deck is so people
can figure out before they come to
Netflix is this the right fit for them
well what’s intriguing for me because
you’re a competitive guy is I looked at
everything that you sent out in the last
five years and I would like to think
that you’ve told me enough to replicate
Netflix but no one can why is that you
know it’s probably a little like
Starbucks doesn’t seem that hard to make
coffee and yet 1:1 coffee chain is
amazing around the world so there’s a
lot of heart and passion that goes in it
that doesn’t come across in the word
since the execution it’s the people at
Netflix you know
is a very special place and if you look
at the big tech companies apples done
very well Microsoft hasn’t lost too much
in Google’s you know lost a lot it was
quite a bit of variation despite all
three of those being talented long-term
oriented companies and when you look at
Apple one of the amazing things is when
they did the iPhone they negotiated and
talked and built relationships for six
years before the iPhone was allowed to
come to China so from 2005 2011 and
that’s of a lot of patience and now
that’s one of their largest markets in
the world for the iPhone and so what we
take away from that is a sense of great
patience so it may be soon that we have
a license in China or it may take a
couple years but we’re going to be very
patient and we’re looking forward to a
time you know a decade or two decades
from now when the Chinese middle class
will want and embrace the kind of
content that we have
thank you guys so much for watching I
made this video because Luke asked me to
so if there’s a famous entrepreneur that
you are made of profile next leave the
comments below and I’ll see what I can
do I’d also love to know which of the
ten rules had the biggest impact on you
and why what change you’re going to make
to your life or your business after
watching this video leave it in the
comments and I’m going to join in the
discussion finally one thing if a quick
shout-out to one of my tds instructors
here Philippe Philippe thank you so much
for picking up a copy of my book I hope
you enjoy I love the picture that you
posted on Facebook and yeah enjoy the
reading over the holiday break man
so thank you guys again for watching I
believe in you I hope you continue to
believe in yourself and whatever your
one word is much love I’ll see you soon
up till 2002 all we focused on was
survival and then once we got public and
and we’re profitable we started thinking
wow this thing might last and the the
cruelest irony would be to not want to
work there you know to let it become a
place we didn’t want to be and so we
tried to think through what do we really
care about was what we really care about
working with incredible people on hard
problems and that that was the essence
so we should organize everything around
supporting that of working with you know
just incredibly talented people and so
that led us to freedom and
responsibility because incredible people
don’t want to be micromanaged and the
idea is that we manage through setting
context and letting people run you’ve
got to have the right people you’ve got
to reinforce that with values setting
context about what the company is trying
to achieve but the idea is to build a
system where amazing amounts of service
improvement happen in the marketing and
the content and the technology and these
are interface without direct
intervention of meat and so some
companies operate by you know the
product genius at the top and we all
know these companies in this whole motif
of you know to be a great CEO you’ve got
to be the great product person who
really you know and it’s intoxicating
fun but you’re building incredible
amounts of dependence on yourself and
eventually you know how well I know how
Turkish consumers consume Netflix it’s
not that well and so you’re much
stronger obviously building a
distributed set of great thinkers people
know that but in the past what they’ve
done is try to make everything a process
they said okay I don’t want it to be a
genius so we’re going to organize a
process for everything and these once in
a while you hard-working the dummy proof
it’s going to be such a good process
than anybody this was the IBM thing and
then if you dummy proof the process you
only get dummies to work there you know
to do the process and so that’s why
we’re so you know opposed to that
instead so focused on keeping people
great food I’m realizing they’ll be
mistakes but there’ll be a lot of
positive achievement to give some
examples of that I mean you know you
talk about it generically it sounds
great but what are some specific
examples I take pride in making as few
decisions as possible as opposed to as
many as possible and so when something
significant changes
the content or the house of cards
purchase you know Ted explained it it
was a huge purchase at that time it was
a half an hour conversation you know we
went back and forth I said are you
really sure it’s a great bet yes let’s
do it you know it wasn’t like me reading
the script and me meeting with Kevin
Spacey and you know or equivalent
samples on the marketing or equivalent
examples on the product in the evolution
there so it’s creating a sense of I want
to make a difference than I can make a
difference and if that’s what the leader
gets excited about is that other people
are making a difference and you’ve got
the right people you got to be super
demanding so the you know one part is
freedom and responsibility the other
part is a high performance culture where
we say adequate performance gets a
generous severance package and so you
know we look at it we say we want to be
like a major league baseball team and
you know you’ve only got so many
positions on the field and if everyone
is not incredible at what they do then
you’re not going to win so you turn over
a lot of people and so we turn over a
lot of people who feel like you know we
give people a fair shot and you know we
hire pretty openly and they know what
they’re getting into but we’re looking
for people who for whom freedom and
responsibility works because they do
incredible work and hold is part of the
interviewing process do you have
essentially a culture check like that
yes but not like checklist culture is
always something that we interview for
of kind of curiosity and and you know
it’s easy to find people say oh I read
the nymphos culture deck I love it I
really want to be there you know what’s
harder is old you know what are the main
things you disagree with and why you
know and when we get a blank stare or
were like okay not really a first
principle thinker and when they say well
I thought the way that you didn’t talk
about how to acculturate and you know if
I’m not great and day three am I out you
know or is there you know it you look at
it like athlete where it’s over some you
know time period to prove yourself and
if so what’s that time period and why
haven’t you clarified that they were
like ah yeah that’s a good insight the
first principle thinker so we’re looking
for people who
you know are curious typically
self-confident and they’re not they’re
questioning everything around them
to be Reed Hastings or Mark Zuckerberg
or Bill Gates I short I mean you know
why a way we’re doing this we’re like we
won’t have a difference we think of
ourselves like Alchemist we take in
money and out comes joy I would say I’ve
always believed that a strong mission
statements really important and I have
to say we’ve never succeeded at it he’s
an American entrepreneur and
philanthropist he’s the co-founder and
CEO of Netflix and he serves on the
board of directors of Facebook and a
number of other nonprofit organizations
he has an estimated net worth of over a
billion dollars
he’s Reed Hastings and here’s my take on
his top 10 rules to success rule number
one is my personal favorite and make
sure to stick around all the way to the
end for some special bonus clips and as
always if Reed says something that
really resonates with you please leave
in the comments below and put quotes
around it to other people can be
inspired as well enjoy
[Music]
you have to be authentic I mean you’ve
got no hope if you try to pretend to be
Reed Hastings or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill
Gates or whoever you want to think your
CEOs are that you’ve met you know that
is crazy and you got to really get
comfortable with yourself your strengths
and weaknesses
people are inspired by authenticity and
I’m just surprised how many people feel
like they’re acting and or try to act
and you may be a really quiet person and
that’s fine but if you have that fierce
will that desire for the institution the
company to be great in your own role and
that is secondary and you authentically
express that whatever ways you do then
you’ll be greatly accepted okay
and so that’s all it takes is to be
authentic and not try to be something
else and to fundamentally care at your
core about what’s good for the company
and if everybody knows and you act in
the notion of what’s good as best as
your judgement can tell what’s good for
the company they will see that and
people will follow you and they won’t be
cynical it’s when you hide things it’s
when you pretend if we don’t if we’re
not creative enough if we don’t push it
hard enough you know we’ve got to have
some failures and so we don’t really
want to have all hits I’m gladly glad
the first ones are hits but you know the
sign that you’re right at the the edge
of chaos the edge of creativity is that
some stuff doesn’t work and why do you
want to be there because networks don’t
want to be there life short I mean you
know why a way we’re doing this we’re
like we want to have a difference right
now and so it’s a it’s an eight that’s
wanting to to push the edge to create
something that we the people are proud
of and that they enjoy we collect this
year about eight billion dollars of
customers money so thank you all of you
for giving us your money and what we do
is we say that money is entrust to
create joy we have to turn that into the
most joy possible and so we look and we
say for every show if a show cost a
hundred million dollars how much joy how
much viewing did it create amongst all
of you
if it costs 50 million or 200 million of
course you want different amounts of joy
so we look at it as how much joy can we
create of your money and if we turn it
into joy effectively then you’re happy
and you tell your friends and we grow
and then we have more money next year to
turn into more joy so we think of
ourselves like Alchemist we take in
money and out comes joy I would say I’ve
always believed that a strong mission
statements really important and I have
to say we’ve never succeeded at it it’s
like this odd thing you know we’ve had
them every year for 15 years they’re
constantly different and now we’re all
so cynical we’re like well we’re trying
to make people happy I mean that’s the
fundamental thing is in consumer service
you know we’re trying to be better and
us in Disney and mission aren’t that
different there’s a bunch of different
tactics at it but we’re an emotional
product we cater to the things that are
important but not necessary and I love
that part about it because like when
you’re selling milk or penicillin you’re
selling something somebody needs and we
get to sell something you want okay that
you choose to do because it’s really
cool a human you know to be entertained
and connect to people over entertainment
and so we celebrate that a lot and we
want to change the industry but in terms
of like a mission statement like so many
companies have you know Facebook to
talks about a more connected and open
world and that you see that phrase again
and again and again and it’s a powerful
mantra we don’t have an equivalent and I
think we probably would have been
stronger if we do we’re in the early
days it was to connect people with
movies they love and it’s okay but it’s
kind of like a long kind of awkward
phrase connect people with movies the
love and you know it’s just not punchy
and and then so like we used it we had
t-shirts you know and then I didn’t
really motivate anyone didn’t really
stick but we knew we were trying to make
people happy with DVDs and then
eventually was dreaming and original
content so it didn’t hold us back much
what I find interesting about you the
way you conduct your business is that
when when stuff doesn’t work out you
apologize you go and say we made it I
made a mistake and all that what is that
the first time you had to go out there
and say sorry
this was
and it was I remember with the increase
the rate increase right then you’re like
not forget about it like what was I
expiry for you as a boss when you’re
like I have to go and own this going
through marriage counseling 20 years ago
was really how I moved to become a
better manager and leader really and
yeah you know this marriage counselor
was able to get me to see that I was
often lying to myself and to my wife you
know saying oh family is the most
important thing and I’d stay at work all
night and that the value of honesty is
that people can take honesty even if
it’s not necessarily what they want to
hear if it’s really sincere and then the
question is read what do you do to not
lose a culture if you believe you got a
great one early on yeah I mean one of
the most common questions new employee
has is how do we preserve the culture
and I say well to preserve something to
pickle it is the wrong solution we’re
not trying to preserve the culture we’re
trying to make it better and it’s
materially better than it was five years
ago and I’ll cite a couple of specific
examples and then say you know what your
job in addition to doing your role is to
figure out how do we get even better
because it’s only when you struggle to
get better that you know you you really
keep it vital it alive so you always
have to be saying yeah it’s pretty good
culture but I’m sure it can be better
how can we be better and so it’s that
struggle to improve that keeps it fresh
you know we’re pretty good at movies and
TV shows and so the competition that we
worry about is the substitution you know
again when people are spending time on
snapchat or Facebook video or YouTube
it’s not Netflix or some new app that
isn’t yet invented and so in the long
term you have to believe that movies and
TV shows will be sort of like the Opera
and the novel pretty mushy businesses
and human entertainment will have moved
on to something new so yeah we’re
getting really good at movies and TV
shows we get we are in the beginning of
a great run on that but in the long term
they’ll be substitutes or substitutes
for everything to come up and then the
ultimate challenge for us is can we
figure out that what that new form of
entertainment is is that VR is it gaming
is it AR
oh three and oh four were growing really
fast oh five blockbuster attacks and so
we thought we were very clever we came
up with a number of ways to
counter-attack and remember that
everybody’s got every DVD so you have
basically the same bust or nuts had
the same content offering because it’s
non-exclusive licensing to get DVDs so
we could differentiate on our service
fulfillment levels where 99% and theirs
were 89 but that’s like a really
abstract for a customer you know
thinking of signing up doesn’t mean
anything right and then they discounted
massively so I was like half our price
and so we were losing share so I you
know we were struggling what to do about
it so we did three or four big efforts
one is in the end of oh five we added
Netflix friends which was our own social
network and remember no five
you know Facebook’s just on a few
universities okay so our own social
network amongst our members and if you
enabled each other you could see what
each other were renting and rating and
we thought wow the viral effects of this
would be really powerful etc we added ad
sales back in the day was like a yahoo
type banners and you could have we could
have we sold banners you know above the
the choosing interface we added use DVD
sales on our site to consumers so you
know of course we had some excess DVDs
from four years ago so we added an
operation to sell them for four bucks a
pop and you know two different logistics
but we added all that and we added a red
envelope entertainment which was a group
that we brought in to buy DVDs buy films
out of Sundance and similar festivals to
them publish them on DVD so getting into
content so we did these four efforts and
each one you know was a dozen people 15
people and made us feel great I mean
employees loved them because you know
here was a tangible thing that was not
just 98 percent versus 89 percent here
was the thing that they couldn’t do or
weren’t doing it was a differentiator
right and was it management so clever
and we went through these waves of
battles and
six and oh seven and in the end we won
they ended up closing down their online
thing and two years later going
completely bankrupt but we looked back
and none of those four efforts made any
contribution to our victory and one by
one we had closed them down along the
way every single one of those four and
so in hindsight we realized when
attacked we should retreat to do the
core better and not try to broaden the
surface of attack essentially and it was
a great lesson for us of focus and so
now when people say aren’t you getting
in the news or sports were like
absolutely not you know and we’re really
confident of our answer like movies and
TV shows on a global basis enormous
market and so we’re much less subject to
being prone to go off and chase the
shiny object to try to have something in
a checklist to differentiate and to
trust and in hindsight if we had just
gone from like 98 percent perfect to
ninety-nine point nine we would have
done a lot more for the business and you
know and it’s hard work it’s operational
logistics how to get DVDs not to break I
mean the amount of polycarbonate
analysis we had to do is all this stuff
we would have beaten blog post or sooner
than we did but let’s talk about values
high performance freedom responsibility
context not control these are obviously
not math it seems like that if you want
to do well at Netflix you have to
subscribe to the values and if you don’t
you’re out yeah and the reason that we
publish our culture deck is so people
can figure out before they come to
Netflix is this the right fit for them
well what’s intriguing for me because
you’re a competitive guy is I looked at
everything that you sent out in the last
five years and I would like to think
that you’ve told me enough to replicate
Netflix but no one can why is that you
know it’s probably a little like
Starbucks doesn’t seem that hard to make
coffee and yet 1:1 coffee chain is
amazing around the world so there’s a
lot of heart and passion that goes in it
that doesn’t come across in the word
since the execution it’s the people at
Netflix you know
is a very special place and if you look
at the big tech companies apples done
very well Microsoft hasn’t lost too much
in Google’s you know lost a lot it was
quite a bit of variation despite all
three of those being talented long-term
oriented companies and when you look at
Apple one of the amazing things is when
they did the iPhone they negotiated and
talked and built relationships for six
years before the iPhone was allowed to
come to China so from 2005 2011 and
that’s of a lot of patience and now
that’s one of their largest markets in
the world for the iPhone and so what we
take away from that is a sense of great
patience so it may be soon that we have
a license in China or it may take a
couple years but we’re going to be very
patient and we’re looking forward to a
time you know a decade or two decades
from now when the Chinese middle class
will want and embrace the kind of
content that we have
thank you guys so much for watching I
made this video because Luke asked me to
so if there’s a famous entrepreneur that
you are made of profile next leave the
comments below and I’ll see what I can
do I’d also love to know which of the
ten rules had the biggest impact on you
and why what change you’re going to make
to your life or your business after
watching this video leave it in the
comments and I’m going to join in the
discussion finally one thing if a quick
shout-out to one of my tds instructors
here Philippe Philippe thank you so much
for picking up a copy of my book I hope
you enjoy I love the picture that you
posted on Facebook and yeah enjoy the
reading over the holiday break man
so thank you guys again for watching I
believe in you I hope you continue to
believe in yourself and whatever your
one word is much love I’ll see you soon
up till 2002 all we focused on was
survival and then once we got public and
and we’re profitable we started thinking
wow this thing might last and the the
cruelest irony would be to not want to
work there you know to let it become a
place we didn’t want to be and so we
tried to think through what do we really
care about was what we really care about
working with incredible people on hard
problems and that that was the essence
so we should organize everything around
supporting that of working with you know
just incredibly talented people and so
that led us to freedom and
responsibility because incredible people
don’t want to be micromanaged and the
idea is that we manage through setting
context and letting people run you’ve
got to have the right people you’ve got
to reinforce that with values setting
context about what the company is trying
to achieve but the idea is to build a
system where amazing amounts of service
improvement happen in the marketing and
the content and the technology and these
are interface without direct
intervention of meat and so some
companies operate by you know the
product genius at the top and we all
know these companies in this whole motif
of you know to be a great CEO you’ve got
to be the great product person who
really you know and it’s intoxicating
fun but you’re building incredible
amounts of dependence on yourself and
eventually you know how well I know how
Turkish consumers consume Netflix it’s
not that well and so you’re much
stronger obviously building a
distributed set of great thinkers people
know that but in the past what they’ve
done is try to make everything a process
they said okay I don’t want it to be a
genius so we’re going to organize a
process for everything and these once in
a while you hard-working the dummy proof
it’s going to be such a good process
than anybody this was the IBM thing and
then if you dummy proof the process you
only get dummies to work there you know
to do the process and so that’s why
we’re so you know opposed to that
instead so focused on keeping people
great food I’m realizing they’ll be
mistakes but there’ll be a lot of
positive achievement to give some
examples of that I mean you know you
talk about it generically it sounds
great but what are some specific
examples I take pride in making as few
decisions as possible as opposed to as
many as possible and so when something
significant changes
the content or the house of cards
purchase you know Ted explained it it
was a huge purchase at that time it was
a half an hour conversation you know we
went back and forth I said are you
really sure it’s a great bet yes let’s
do it you know it wasn’t like me reading
the script and me meeting with Kevin
Spacey and you know or equivalent
samples on the marketing or equivalent
examples on the product in the evolution
there so it’s creating a sense of I want
to make a difference than I can make a
difference and if that’s what the leader
gets excited about is that other people
are making a difference and you’ve got
the right people you got to be super
demanding so the you know one part is
freedom and responsibility the other
part is a high performance culture where
we say adequate performance gets a
generous severance package and so you
know we look at it we say we want to be
like a major league baseball team and
you know you’ve only got so many
positions on the field and if everyone
is not incredible at what they do then
you’re not going to win so you turn over
a lot of people and so we turn over a
lot of people who feel like you know we
give people a fair shot and you know we
hire pretty openly and they know what
they’re getting into but we’re looking
for people who for whom freedom and
responsibility works because they do
incredible work and hold is part of the
interviewing process do you have
essentially a culture check like that
yes but not like checklist culture is
always something that we interview for
of kind of curiosity and and you know
it’s easy to find people say oh I read
the nymphos culture deck I love it I
really want to be there you know what’s
harder is old you know what are the main
things you disagree with and why you
know and when we get a blank stare or
were like okay not really a first
principle thinker and when they say well
I thought the way that you didn’t talk
about how to acculturate and you know if
I’m not great and day three am I out you
know or is there you know it you look at
it like athlete where it’s over some you
know time period to prove yourself and
if so what’s that time period and why
haven’t you clarified that they were
like ah yeah that’s a good insight the
first principle thinker so we’re looking
for people who
you know are curious typically
self-confident and they’re not they’re
questioning everything around them
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